


The future's uncertain (and the end is always near)

by aesc



Series: Extended Jam 'Verse [2]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: 1960s, Alternate Universe, F/M, Graduate School, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-15
Updated: 2011-09-06
Packaged: 2017-10-22 15:34:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/239585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aesc/pseuds/aesc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mid-August 1969, involving Erik, Charles, Raven, Moira, Hank, and Darwin and a VW Bus. And a small music festival in upstate New York called Woodstock.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Okay! I guess, uh, welcome to the Extended Jam 'Verse, wherein Charles and Erik are doctoral students at MIT, it's 1969, it's the summer before their fifth year begins, and important things are happening. In order to understand this fic, you probably need to read "Slight return," which takes place about a month before, so, sorry about that. Also, this ended up wanting to be serious--in part it's Erik's backstory--and I hope to make it up to everyone who wants some actual peace and love by having fun, exuberant paint-splattered Charles and Erik at some point in the next chapter.
> 
> The title is from "Roadhouse Blues" by The Doors. It's a bit anachronistic, since the song wasn't released until 1970, but the lyrics make me think of Erik for some reason.

**Chapter one**

The first memory Erik has is, he _thinks_ , of the view from their first flat in London. His mind's eye looks through the grimy window to the bombed-out shell of another block of flats across the street, then four shrapnel-scarred buildings, and then a gap, a hole leading down to foundations and torn pipes. _Mama, it's missing a tooth_ , he remembers saying as he pointed, and then his mother's soft hand turning him away and her softer voice asking him to come away.

It's hazy at the edges, unreal enough that sometimes he thinks it's from a dream, or something he'd created to fill the empty space between being born and the first true memory he has, the one he _knows_ is real.

"I was five," he tells Charles, "and I had this tricycle – _don't_ laugh," he growls, which doesn't stop Charles from muffling a soft, snorting breath in the crook of his arm, " – and this little bastard of an eight-year-old knocked me off it when I was out riding one day."

"And you got angry," Charles says. Erik's not looking, but he can hear the eye-roll. His fingers trace absently across Erik's chest, the slightest scratching of a nail enough to make Erik shiver.

"Oh, I was pissed. I even remember the little shit's name." Bobby Donovan, even more of a sadist than most eight-year-old boys could be. Erik can still see him, looming and truculent and gripping Erik's tricycle by the handle, his grimy shirt stained with Erik imagines was the blood of other unfortunates. _Feckin' Jerry_ , he'd snarled at Erik with a reflexive, confused hostility, as though he'd latched on to Erik's accent and identified it as belonging to the enemy but still sensed the insult was not entirely accurate.

He half-expects Charles to butt in with the obvious conclusion to the story, but Charles keeps silent and settles for watching Erik closely, blue eyes clear in the yellowing light of Erik's bedroom. It's been a month since Washington, and he still doesn't know how much of him is included in the _everything_ Charles says he knows about him. On the occasions when Charles presses him to talk, their conversations end up being half Erik telling and his memories filling in the blank spaces between words, spilling out like blood.

"So, I told him to give it back, and he didn't, and when he didn't…" He shrugs, shoulder riding the fine curve of Charles's jaw where it rests against his collar bone. "I felt this _force_ inside me. I can't describe it." He never could, and he doesn't think he'll ever be able to. It had been sudden and visceral as his anger, a caged thing stirring to life and flinging itself against the bars; that's as close as he can come. "Next thing I knew, I was pulling the trike toward me, and Bobby was hanging on to the back wheel, only I wasn't… I wasn't touching anything."

"Abilities usually manifest in response to stress," Charles says. He reaches across Erik, takes a drag from his cigarette and grinds it out in the ashtray.

"Thank you, Professor." He can't quite make the sarcasm genuine. Charles's arm, his chest against Erik's, is warm and distracting.

Charles huffs and nips his collar bone in irritation anyway. "And you scared the living daylights out of Bobby Donovan, I'm sure."

"It got worse after that," Erik tells him, "until we moved."

Moved _again_. Erik has evidence of having lived in nine different places by the time he and his mother moved to New York: Warsaw (where he was born), Danzig (two months), Karlskrona (three months), three different flats in London, then on to Manchester, Bristol, and finally Killarney, where he'd spent most of his growing-up. Of the nine, he remembers two places in London, the little house in Bristol, and Killarney, where his mother had taken up a teaching position at a small academy.

He has evidence of almost as many schools, and his mother's exasperated reminiscences about his performance at each of them. _You are a smart boy, Erik, so why is it you must act so foolishly?_ At the time he'd never had an answer.

"You have problems with authority," Charles says indulgently before rolling on top of Erik and silently ordering Erik to keep still. _Not all authority_ , Erik thinks at him, craning his head up for a kiss, _Just the authority that's wrong_ , and Charles responds only with a soft hum and telepathic laughter.

"We have to be up early tomorrow," he says against the soft pressure of Charles's mouth. He can taste Charles's amusement in the way his lips curve, the warm flicker of it brushing across his cortex. "And do you want to traumatize your sister and Moira when they get here?"

July has melted into August; they're not much more than sweat and spit and lazy limbs tangled together, sheets on the floor.

"It might be fun," Charles says, laughing for real now. Then his laughter alchemizes into more kisses as he licks his way into Erik's mouth, heart picking up its pace as the two of them press together, and Charles does this like he does everything he loves, without reserve.

* * *

Jakob Eisenhardt had traded on his father's reputation as a war hero, and his own as a respected businessman, to secure his family's safe passage across the Austrian frontier into Switzerland. Or, rather, he had hoped to trade on it. "There was the Kristallnacht in Austria," Edie Lehnsherr said, "and in Poland, where we fled, his name meant very little."

 _Lehnsherr_ was the name of cousins from his mother's side of the family, London relations who had emigrated thirty years before the end of the world. His mother had taken the name and, having taken it, had never set it aside. Erik tried to imagine himself as _Erik Eisenhardt_ and could not quite manage it.

"He had always hoped for cooler heads to prevail," his mother continued, the one time she told Erik about it. "And when the fires ignited around us, and his sacrifices for our country meant nothing anymore, we ran. But it was too late."

She had a small book of photographs, smuggled from country to country in a pocket sewn into the inside of her skirt. When examining them, she rarely spoke, hoarding her thoughts as she flipped slowly through the pages. Sometimes she would remove a photo from its setting, or a dried flower – from her bridal veil, she explained – or the card announcing the bar mitzvah of a now-dead best friend's son, a fragment of a Torah from the neighborhood temple in Dusseldorf; she would remove these things and touch them with her scarred fingers, then replace them carefully.

One time he had come across the book on her nightstand and, without intending it, curled up on her bed to look through it. His mother's script danced across the page, much of it unintelligible to him – he had been six or so, still learning – but he knew enough to patch together something of a story. His mother had had a sister and brother, both gone; she had married at twenty-two, to a tall, square-jawed man in a military uniform ( _mein Mann, mein Liebling, mein Schatz_ ). There were vacation pictures, grainy and faded, of a sturdy teenaged girl in a bathing costume, dipping her toe in a glacier lake, and mountains in the distance. Two older people, his grandparents Erik supposed, gazing stiffly at the camera.

The last one was of a family gathering, black curtains in the windows – _it was so the neighbors would not suspect_ – and a feast on the table.

"Rosh Hashanah," his mother said, coming quietly into the room. Erik jumped, and would have gotten up, but she smiled her usual, forgiving smile. "I don't remember the names of many of the people there; they were people from the neighborhood. It was the last time I saw them; that night, Jakob and I fled east, to Warsaw, before the borders closed. There was nowhere else to go."

Erik studied the photographs. He sensed, in the dim way a seven-year-old sensed such things, that they were important, that they represented people who should be known to him – but were not. They had been _taken_ , was all he could come up with, as though a monster had snatched them away. He thought of his mother, with her small hands and the grief lines in the corner of her eyes, and it occurred to him that if so much had been taken, from his father to his grandparents to cousins, she might be taken, too.

* * *

"Oh thank god you have clothes on," is Raven's greeting when she sweeps in the door. She and Charles exchange sibling-ish kisses. "And _please_ stop projecting at me; there's only so much I want to know about my dork of an older brother."

"That's not very liberated of you," Charles says. He sounds disapproving, but he's spilling pleasure all over the place, not even bothering to mask it. Usually Charles's relentless good cheer and enthusiasm would drive Erik up the wall, but today it's a glow to bask in as he watches Charles inspect his little sister to make sure she's in one piece, then pull her back into a hug again. "I missed you _so much_ ," Charles tells her, voice soft and fierce in the curve of her neck.

"I'm not back from the wars or anything." Raven's trying for teasing, but Erik can hear the catch in her voice.

"Are you sure? I've heard stories about what goes on out there." Raven rolls her yellow eyes at him; Charles has, Erik knows, stepped on the edges of an old argument. Instead of pursuing it, Charles holds his hands up in surrender, finally dissolving into laughter at the look on his sister's face.

For his part, Erik hangs out on the periphery of the reunion, half-wanting to retreat to his bedroom; he at least has the excuse of packing, which Charles has left to the last minute, and he can hear Moira coming up the stairs, which means the kitchen will officially be overcrowded once she gets here. At the same second thoughts of escape come to him, though, he feels Charles's mind catch against his, and the not-unpleasant sensation of Charles's attention focusing on him like a laser.

"Raven," Charles says, tugging her closer, "Raven, this is Erik. I told you about him?"

"Erik." Despite the cool blue of her skin, Raven's voice is warm, deeper than he'd expect from a young woman. She thrusts a hand at him, and he accepts it automatically, intrigued by the scales in the soft curve of her palm, smooth-rough against his own skin. "It's very good to meet you," Raven continues as she eyes him up and down, "Charles won't shut up about you."

Erik grunts absently; talking to people, even (or especially) the sister of his boyfriend, isn't his strong suit, especially when talking involves polite emptiness. Raven has all Charles's forthrightness and more besides. Having Charles's attention riveted on him is disconcerting enough sometimes; _two_ Xaviers is exponentially worse.

Fortunately, Moira makes her entrance, grumbling about the narrow stairway and lack of parking – "I'm double-parked, Lehnsherr; I hope your landlord isn't planning on going anywhere" – and drawing Charles over to her. They exchange quick hugs, and Moira demands to know if Charles is _ever_ going to show up at their place again.

"I like it here," Charles says, looking around Erik's flat as though surveying something ten times larger and five times nicer than what's basically a pair of overgrown closets. He spares a quick, private smile for Erik, who allows himself to return it.

"Please God, take me now." Raven sighs. "Speaking of, can we book? Hank's train gets in in like a half-hour, and I want to be there to pick him up."

"Who's Hank?" Charles asks suspiciously. "You've never told me about him."

Moira whistles softly.

"It's too late to defend my honor, if that's what you're asking," Raven informs him. Erik takes this opportunity to vanish into his bedroom and get their duffels, not that he can't hear Charles's cranky spluttering when Raven says maybe she _would_ have told Charles, if Charles had shut up for _one second_ about Erik, but if Charles has to know, Hank is her boyfriend – her _brilliant_ boyfriend, studying aeronautics and going to UCLA next year for his doctorate.

"You'll like him," she assures Charles. "He's a major-league nerd like you. He's cool."

"Should you really use 'Charles' and 'cool' in the same sentence?" Erik asks as he edges his way out of his bedroom; the tiny hall connecting bedroom and living room-kitchen is taken up mostly by the bathroom. Charles's duffle bounces off the doorframe.

"Har har," Charles says sarcastically. "I'll have you know I am _very_ cool. Hip, even. Groovy."

"Keep telling yourself that." Erik pushes at Charles with his duffel; Charles stares at it blankly. "Here, I'm not your fucking servant."

"Oh, you are very clever," Charles grumbles, but he's smiling a bit – reluctantly, mouth curled at the edges – and, despite his protestations, takes the bag.

"Are we all set?" Raven's bouncing on her toes. It's possible, Erik thinks, being in the presence of this much Xavier enthusiasm will drive him insane before the weekend's over.

"I can't believe I let you talk me into this," Charles sighs. "This isn't exactly my scene."

"What, other than a library, _isn't_ your scene? Unclench, Charles. It'll be fun," Raven says cheerfully. She twines one arm through his and, gesturing for Moira to lead, shepherds Charles out the door. "Besides, you always whine about how boring and pointless MIT's Society is; well, here's your chance to meet some people who are actually trying to change things."

"It's a music festival," Charles says, "not a political action committee."

"Oh, you'll meet some of my friends from the MLA." Raven looks over her shoulder at Erik, who's checking to make sure the door is double-locked. Not that he has much, but his notes and dissertation are in there, and the few things he _does_ have are things he'd rather keep.

"The Mutant Liberation Army? Are you serious? _Raven_ …"

"I'm not _in_ it," Raven snaps, "I just know people who are. Calm down."

Charles is vibrating, on the edge of something pacifist and sanctimonious. Before it can escalate – and he's pretty sure it will – Erik slides in neatly with, "Far be it from me to shut down political discussion, but MacTaggert's going to kill us if she ends up being ticketed."

"Right," Charles says, "of course," and thank god for etiquette lessons, or what Erik strongly suspects is Charles's innate politeness. Raven seems content to let the matter slide for the moment, frustration ebbing under her smooth and changeable cheeks. He remembers the pictures of her in Charles's flat, where she's always blonde-haired and blue-eyed, the sort of effortless beauty that draws attention because it's so ordinary, so expected.

 _She always felt like she was lying_ , Charles had said one night, when they'd been drunk – just on the edge of _too_ drunk, still lucid enough for confession – and he'd caught Erik staring vacantly at a framed picture of him and Raven at Charles's graduation. _I just wanted to make sure she stayed safe, just because there wasn't a Mutant Registrar – Regis – you know, thing, didn't mean there couldn't ever be._

* * *

He was eleven when the Mutant Registration Act passed the United States Senate.

Even in Killarney, news from the States seemed curiously proximate, as though no ocean separated them, and distant, both at once. The reporter himself wrote as though puzzled by this contradiction, speaking matter-of-factly about the Senate at one moment, and then taking pains to explain how the Senate differed from the House, and how the "present legislation is seen by members of both House and Senate as a satisfactory compromise that would benefit all Americans."

 _When asked for her opinion on the new law, and whether the Republic should ever adopt similar measures, TD Crowley said, 'I feel I can speak for the entire Dáil when I say we have no plans to take up such legislation in the near future. As the Republic seems quite content not to meddle in the biology of human beings – and as we are unaware of comic book villains bombarding Dublin – I see no need for it.'_

"Mama," he said, "it says here the President will sign it 'in light of grave concerns posed to national security and peace.' Why?"

"People who are afraid want safety," his mother answered, "and they will do dangerous things to have it, I suppose." She didn't look up from her grading, essays written in clumsy schoolgirl German.

"Why?" He asked the question again when it seemed as though she hadn't heard him.

"Because that is how people are," was the stiff reply. "Please, _schatzi_ , let me concentrate."

Obediently, Erik turned back to the paper spread across his lap. Despite TD Crowley's assurances, danger prickled up his back, the sense of being watched by something unseen that _knew_ what he was. He imagined himself and others like him – not that he had met another mutant, but they must exist – and police, angry crowds gathered close around him, the nightmare visions he conjured up from hearing the adults talking at _shul_. How would they find him? He tried to reassure himself with this question; he looked like everyone else, and his mother would never consent to any kind of test on him, but the reassurance fell flat. They would find out somehow, and that would be the end.

He read about the Friends of Humanity, the "concerned citizens" who had called for the law, and the response by the Defenders of Mutant Civil Liberties, which promised "immediate action in the courts that would establish the clear unconstitutionality of the MRA."

"The Supreme Court has routinely upheld the rights of the government to obtain relevant information and suspend habeas corpus on individuals or groups who pose a threat to public safety in wartime," the Friends of Humanity spokesman said. "The registration of mutants should be seen as no different than the same oversight applied to Communists, radicals, or anyone else who threatens our nation's stability and the safety of its citizens."

 _Registration_ , he thought. _That's how it starts._

* * *

Hank McCoy is, as advertised, a complete nerd, a fact undisguised by his jeans, plaid shirt, and hemp jewelry. Raven seems taken with him, though, flying out of Moira's van and almost tackling him when he stumbles out from the darkness of South Station. To Erik they're both impossibly young.

Charles gives Hank a quick look – and, Erik knows, a telepathic once-over – and quick as that, his uncertainty melts into enthusiasm. Hank steps back a bit, glancing uncertainly at Raven, who reassures him that Charles is _always_ like this, and within ten seconds is pulling off his shoes to display hairy, prehensile toes. The parade of people coming in and out of the station – _normals_ , Erik thinks spitefully – pauses in consternation as a few of them catch a glimpse of Hank's feet. He doesn't miss the discomfort on Hank's face, or the speed with which he starts to slide his shoes back on.

"There's no need," Charles begins impulsively, and Hank freezes, glancing between Charles and his feet, and Erik says, "We'll be in the car anyway, there's no point in putting those back on."

"Well, it's the Levine Machine," Moira says doubtfully. "You probably can't be too careful."

"Where _is_ Levine, anyway?" Charles asks, like anyone actually cares. Erik thinks this at him, and Charles stifles a grin and shoots a mock-reproving glare at him.

"Finding enlightenment in Amsterdam." Moira hauls the van's side door open. "Hank, if you want to stash your stuff up there and climb in, we can get this show on the road."

Nervously, Hank collects his shoes, although he does calm at Raven's quiet _See, I told you they're cool._ Charles, well-bred as ever, gives Hank some space, and the unease melts into a flurry of making sure everything's stowed on the roof luggage rack (probably illegal, but Erik's checked the frame; it's sturdy) and there's room for Hank to stretch out on the remaining back seat. Raven commandeers the front seat – "I get _carsick_ , man" – and that leaves the mattress and tie-dyed blankets to Charles and Erik.

The V-Dub, despite being only two years old, looks much older, its rear badly re-painted in dark blue with a virulently yellow and off-center X across it. "It was supposed to be the Swedish flag," Moira explains, "but I have no idea why." Inside it's ragged at the edges and smells like old weed and old beer and old mattresses, eye-wrenching blankets spread everywhere, a couple from Charles and Moira's apartment. Erik has to maneuver around crates of beer and Levine's bong collection before he can find a place to stretch out. It ends up, of course, being crammed between the back seat and Charles.

"Your legs really are criminally long," Charles tells him, and pokes a thigh where the denim has started to thin.

"I've never heard you complain about them before," Erik says complacently. "Especially not last night."

"That's true, I haven't. _Especially_ not last night." The van is overwarm, and Charles's body radiates its own heat; sometimes Erik half-wonders if some of that heat is whatever energy it is that Charles's brain runs on, if it's his metabolism or weird psychic projection waves. "Some things," Charles the eavesdropper says, "are better left a mystery."

"New York or bust!" Moira crows. The V-Dub rumbles to life and, with a telepathic assist from Charles, lurches out into the traffic that's politely stopped for it. They settle in for the tedium of getting out of Boston, Charles with a book – Chandler, Erik had confiscated anything having to do with genetics while they were packing – and Erik with plans for watching Charles read and maybe, eventually, fall asleep.

This close, he can pick out the subtle freckles across Charles's nose and cheeks, the impossible blue of his eyes – layered, almost, translucent on top but leading down and down, hypnotic almost. There are hints of red in his hair, where the light picks them out. Raven had forced him into t-shirt and jeans for the trip, but the rest of the time he's in full professor kit, cardigans and practical trousers, and most people looking at him would see a slight and eccentric young man, and not look much deeper, down to the sturdy, practical muscle and bone of him, or the power that throbs underneath them. Everything about Charles is almost calculatedly boyish and innocent and harmless, enough to make you believe he's both these things, and Erik's pretty sure that Charles has bought into the lie himself. For a man whose self-confidence exceeds even Erik's own, he has his boundaries, his fears – not of himself, but other people. _For_ other people, like Raven – Raven and even Erik.

"You going to be cool with this weekend?" Erik pitches his voice low.

"I'll be fine." Charles's lovely mouth goes thin with annoyance; they've had this conversation before, and he doesn't deign to put down his book. "Really, Erik."

"Those hippies threw you for a loop." They've had this out, in the sort of argument that involves more kissing than logic – and, eventually, Erik giving Charles an apology blowjob. "We're talking about thousands of extremely blitzed people here."

"I've been working on shielding," Charles says. He smirks, and one of those blue eyes slants sideways at him. "Anyway, I should be worried about _you_ ; peace and love isn't really your scene, is it?"

 _It's very touching,_ Erik says dryly. _Pacifism? Togetherness?_

 _It's mutant acceptance, too,_ Charles tells him, his mental voice bordering on irritation. _Honestly, Erik. Just because it's not completely in line with your ideology doesn't mean it's completely wrong. Or stupid._ He adds that last before Erik can think it at him.

Mutant politics is one of those things they've told themselves they won't talk about, but argue over anyway. Sometimes it's fun, and the prelude to mind-bendingly transcendent sex, their minds running together for some infinite space before Erik comes back to himself and Charles is laughing down at him and kissing him. Other times Charles goes brittle and silent, and Erik ends up in his bed, alone and fucking _furious_ , wanting to break something and settling for sabotaging his douchebag neighbor's plumbing.

 _Let's not fight this weekend, please?_ Charles gives him the full benefit of his most limpid, pleading expression.

"Jesus Christ," Erik mutters, but presses a sloppy kiss to the crown of Charles's head and tries not to be too happy at the soft pulse of satisfaction that washes over him.

* * *

The Jewish community in Killarney consisted of them, a small handful of refugees (all middle- to upper-class), and thirty other men, women, and children who had been there from before the war. Of the refugees, many were professedly Catholic, converted as the price for saving their lives; they came to _shul_ anyway, and sundown on Friday night saw none of them on the streets.

Erik had no notion of how the holidays or prayers had been observed in Germany; his mother only said "Things are different, and that is necessity," when he asked her about how life now and life then compared. It was only when the high holidays came and she despaired of finding anything truly kosher, or when she would laugh as they feasted on apples and honey and she cleaned Erik's sticky fingers, would he try to imagine what these things would have been like _at home_ , in the places from the photographs.

Still, he spent most of the services meditating on how strange it was to sit in the small, bare room with its simple platform, when empty populated only by folding chairs, and see the richly decorated mantel lifted from the Torah, the glitter of the ornaments. When the _remonim_ , the little bells, chimed, his mother would hold her breath and almost forget the words to the responses. The Hebrew, chanted in Rabbi Rosenwein's rough murmur, didn't fit under the bare yellow lightbulbs.

After services on Shabbos, he would eat his mother's challah (the best in town) and watch the Sabbath candles, and listen to his mother tell stories, some from her school or about her week, some from her girlhood in Dusseldorf. They were all small stories, of a family cat that had gone missing and turned up a week later with a dead bird for a present, a cousin who got the better of a cheating boyfriend, her trip to France. She would sing, and her voice (Erik thought) was beautiful.

 _You are such a serious boy_ , she would say sometimes. And Erik struggled to tell her how he felt, the sense of being in some anxious place between _there_ and _here_ , uncertain even as he held onto her for all he was worth, because what both of them were – what _he_ was – could have them taken from each other in an instant.

* * *

They pick up a hitchhiker somewhere in the emptiness of western Massachusetts. Charles catches wind of him, popping up with a startled cry from where he'd been half-asleep on Erik's shoulder, and then a demand for Moira to stop the van _now_.

The new guy introduces himself as Darwin, and he's more than happy to take a ride. "You're going where I'm going," he says as he and Erik stow his backpack on the roof. The outsized guitar case stays with him, wedged into the space between the side door and the seat, on top of the beer. His shirt is done in a stomach-churning pattern of purple, pink, and green, and his jeans look like they might be cutting off circulation. Darwin might be okay, though, Erik thinks; his ability is instantaneous adaptation, _hyperaccelerated evolution_ , Charles says, going starry-eyed and academic. Darwin edges away from him a little.

"Dude's okay, right?" he asks Raven.

"That's a matter of opinion."

"No dissertation this weekend," Erik reminds Charles, who subsides with a pout and retreats back into his novel, picking up where he'd left off and whispering the words into Erik's head.

He ends up lost on the long trail of words, not really following the narration. The unseen road blurs, miles into tens of miles, punctuated only by Raven announcing they’ve crossed into New York and Moira occasionally stopping to fuel up. Erik can't remember whose idea it was to break into the beer, but they have, and he and Charles split one. In front of them, Darwin's guitar replaces the radio, and he's not half bad, New Orleans blues and acoustic versions of Hendrix and The Band, the notes blending in with the perpetual growl of the van.

Time goes melty and strange, and it's not just whatever's left of Levine's smoking up in the back of the Machine; it's Charles, fallen into a half-doze and taking Erik down with him. Not much distinct filters through, mostly knowledge of how warm Charles is, vague questions as to where they are and what time it is, the welcome pressure of Erik's shoulder against his. For a moment Erik doubts again the wisdom of all this, but keeps his doubts about Charles to himself. They can handle it, if anything happens.

Doubts for himself, on the other hand – he has plenty of those. Amusement wafts off Charles; he's caught the trailing edges of Erik's thoughts. Thousands of people are going to be there, and Erik can barely tolerate a crowded room. The entire _premise_ of the thing is the celebration of peace, and Erik has never been a particularly peaceful. ( _That's an understatement_ , Charles interjects drowsily.) There's music, though, and Charles, and other mutants who have found their way into one of the few human movements that accept them.

 _I still can't believe I'm going to something called an 'Aquarian Exhibition,'_ he says silently to Charles, who snickers quietly and drops down into another layer of sleep, and stays there until Raven says they're a couple miles out of Bethel and are going to have to walk the rest of the way.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter two**

The arsefaced _garda_ had frisked him before he'd thrown Erik in here, rougher treatment than he'd given the little fucker he'd picked up. Then again, Erik thought with a quiet savagery, the other kid had come out of it worse, and had enough time to gaze up at Erik through the haze of blood and a blackening eye and remorse, before the officer had clapped a giant hand on Erik's shoulder and hauled him off.

Adrenaline still ran under the calm, the calm that wasn't much more than a thin skin – skin-deep, really. Erik slouched in the corner of his cell, _his_ cell, because the _garda_ didn't hate the drunk guy or even the perv enough to stick Erik in with them. He watched as the hand resting on his knee twitched every now and then, as though remembering how it'd felt to hold Conor down by his steel-toed boots, and call Conor's pathetic pigsticker knife to him, and watch Conor's eyes go wide in disbelief.

 _Fuckin' hell, you really_ are _a mutie, ain'tcha?_ Conor had said with the bravery of the stupid and the doomed. _One of those feckin' freaks, yeah, Lehnsherr?_ Erik's fist snapped shut, remembering the first punch, the cut of Conor's teeth into his knuckles. The grooves from the incisors and canines were dull red, filled with dried blood and dirt and, maybe, a bit of Conor as well. The officer hadn't offered him a chance to wash or anything in the way of a bandage.

"Oh, you're the _quiet_ type," he'd said when he'd asked Erik if his mother knew what he was doing. Most kids trampled in splashing defiance all over the place, yammering about their rights and wrongful arrest, and get your hands off me, you old twat, "but not you," the officer had remarked when Erik silently accepted his coin and went to call his mother. "Strong silent type, you are."

Erik rolled his eyes. In the cell across the aisle, the drunk man turned over in his sleep and drooled messily on his cot.

A flurry of activity sounded on the other side of the doors – rapid, clicking footsteps, the deep voice of the arse of the garda who'd arrested him. The drunk stirred to life. "I _demand_ to see my son immediately," said his mother's voice, and the garda, after hesitating said, "This way, ma'am."

The door opened and his mother swept through. Erik, glancing up involuntarily, caught the full weight of her disappointment – not her anger, because his mother rarely became truly angry. The disappointment, though. It twisted like a knife, far crueler than the switchblade the little ball of shite had pulled on him earlier; he'd taken that away easily enough, but what sat in his mother's dark eyes and the down-slanting lines around her mouth – there was no doing anything about that.

"Why would you do something like this, Erik?"

"He came at _me_!"

"Yes, _after_ you had egged him into it," his mother snapped. "At least, that is what the witnesses, and the good officer here, say." Erik shrugged and stared determinedly at the floor. The metal bars around him, the heavy door and its stainless steel lock, the threads that reinforced the glass in the small window set into it, hummed quietly in the back of his mind.

 _I could escape from here_ , he thought. With fury still burning at the back of his throat, he could easily bend the bars, wrench open the lock, freeze the guard in place by his gun and any other metal, and walk out.

"Do not," his mother said, "even consider it." She rubbed her temple, as though chasing a headache. "I cannot believe, Erik, that you would do such a thing, that you would..." She trailed off.

"Because we're Jewish," Erik said, "or because I'm a mutant?"

"Both."

The cement wall was cool against his back, strange when anger had the rest of him strung taut and burning. When he let himself look at his mother, he saw her very small and in her sober grey skirt with the white blouse and the blue scarf, the uniform of a small-town schoolteacher. She had her heavy schoolbag, stuffed full of essays, a volume of Goethe protruding from the top. He looked down at the blood dried tacky on his skin, the bruises underpainting the skin of his knuckles and wrists. His shirt had been torn, maybe by Conor, maybe by the _garda_ , Erik had no idea.

"It is only because the witnesses agree that the other boy provoked you, and because you have no… no _record_ ," his mother said the word as though it were a curse, "and you are the head of your class at St. Brendan's that you are being allowed to come home with me tonight. Although I doubt the wisdom of that."

He _did_ look up now, more decisively. "Mama, I couldn't… I could _not_ let him say that about me. You don't even – you don't _know_ what it's like – "

The expression on her face stopped him cold. "Do you not have sufficient pride in who and what you are, that you must beat another boy? Erik?"

Erik shook his head, not because he had no pride, but as though to shake her words off and the disappointment that came with them.  
"There is a difference," his mother said, very softly, "between being unashamed and being _violent_. Between being proud of who and what you are, and breaking the law." She sighed and touched the bars of his cell. "I thought I had taught you better than to… to…"

"Mama…" The anger struggled to hold on, grasped at the straws of his mother's inability to understand one thing about him, that although she knew persecution she couldn't know it through his eyes. That she might never know, or might only know imperfectly, caused the anger to slip and thin out, and even as he reached for it, it fell away.

His mother smiled, her dark eyes crinkling ( _you have my eyes, Erik_ ), and shook her head. She turned to the guard and nodded tersely at the lock; when she looked back up at Erik again, the smile was gone, and weariness had taken its place.

She led him out through the station, and the humiliating process of signing the paperwork, and out onto the streets. Night had come, dark far overhead broken by the lower-level lights of the street and the car park. His mother marched them across it, sharp right, her practical heels click-click-clicking on the pavement. Erik trailed her, slump-shouldered and hands in his pockets.

"You're a handsome boy," his mother said absently. "Straighten up, and don't walk like that Murray boy."

Erik straightened obediently. The air brushed cool against his too-hot skin and made him dizzy.

"In return for my indulgence," his mother said as she unlocked the front door to their flat, "you will only leave the house for your classes, _shul_ , and any errands for the next few weeks." Erik soaked this up in determined silence. His mother let them into their flat, warm, homey smell, and he relaxed a little. "And you may also leave to play chess with Mrs. Rabinowitz." Erik stifled the reflexive protest. "It is a _mitzvah_ you ought to do anyway; with her husband gone, she has few people to play with her, and Rabbi is always busy."

"Yes, Mama."

"Of course, yes, Mama." She kissed him on the cheek. "Now you may go clean yourself – " this with a frown at his hands and his disreputable shirt " – and when you're done, you may help me make dinner, if you aren't too much of a hardened criminal to help your poor, helpless mother."

"I'm not," Erik said, and hated and couldn't help the catch in his voice. "I won't be."

* * *

In the end, they have to walk the two miles. Charles, damned if he's leaving their beer and food behind, took over leadership of their little group and Erik, after working out the logistics, detached the luggage rack from the Levine Machine. The beer and food went onto the luggage rack along with the duffels, and Erik levitated the whole of it carefully, watching the frame to make sure it wouldn't bow. It held.

"Using our powers in the service of dissipation," Charles had said, "where have I heard that before?" and kissed Erik long and slow, and solidly enough that Erik almost forgot to keep the luggage rack up.

They'd tracked down Raven's MLA friends, who'd arrived the day before in a bus that, if possible, is even more decrepit than the Levine Machine. The interior smells like years of marinating body odor and sex and unaired linens. Erik, almost infinitely adaptable, had immediately claimed a bunk for himself and Charles, who had clearly swallowed down some uncertainty and joined him.

Now they're at the end of the day, still overcast, sunlight bleeding imperceptibly to twilight and then to full dark. The sky has constantly threatened them with rain, hovering right on the edge of it – a drizzle here and there, enough to make you brace and wait for the deluge that, so far, hasn't come. Humidity sticks to fabric and skin, and sometimes just skin; Raven's been wandering around in only a loose skirt, and Erik can't quite remember what happened to his t-shirt. He suspects he might have the beginning of a sunburn, with the sun filtering dim and silvery through the clouds, but the beer has his blood humming contentedly and he can't really be bothered to go looking.

It's night now, the stage a blaze of light at the base of the hill. The air still sticks, and the breeze, when it comes, is half-hearted and doesn't do much to push away the smell of sweat, pot, alcohol. The music, an artist Erik's only vaguely familiar with, is someone more up Charles's alley, acoustic and slow, meditative rhythms that mostly make Erik want to drift off to sleep. Maybe that's why Charles likes it.

"It's so cool you're heading out our way, man," Alex is saying. He's not really looking at Erik, or anywhere in particular. The giant stage situated in the hollow of the hill might be it, or the trees that border one edge of the crowd. Or nothing in particular. Alex takes a drag of his cigarette and exhales slowly. "Seriously," he continues after a moment of trying for smoke rings, "we could always use more people."

"I'll keep it in mind," Erik says, and swallows the rest of his beer.

"I hope you're not corrupting him, Alex," Charles's voice says from the interior of the bus. A twist of displeasure, more telepathic than verbal, accompanies it.

"Corrupting me, or corrupting him?" Erik calls back.

"Either," Charles says, "both."

"Hey, the MLA would be happy to have both of you." Angel now, surfacing from her nap. The wings on her back shiver slightly, as though she's stretching them, their surfaces gossamer and rippling like oil mixed across the surface of water. "We're mostly focused on giving other mutants the courage to become more politically active. If we're the future, the future needs to start now."

"Did you read that off a script?" Charles demands. "It sounds like you read it off a sodding script."

"Mutants shouldn't be left out of the movements their human counterparts are involved in," Angel says, and it _does_ sound like something she's rehearsed before, "but if we want to have a voice in how civil rights are going to be legislated, we _all_ need to speak up."

"Oh, that's right up your alley," Raven says, and elbows Erik.

"If you don't _mind_ ," Charles says testily, "I'm trying to concentrate."

 _Concentrating_ , in this case, involves Charles skipping mind to mind, looking for what he calls "good reception," someone to ride along with so he can hear the music better. "I'm experimenting," he'd said to Erik earlier, "and it's harder than I thought" – not because, Erik had realized, Charles isn't powerful (he is), but it's hard staying inside someone else's mind when drugs twist and skew it like a funhouse. And anyway, what he hears is how the other person hears it, which means if all they process is a slurry of sound distorted by alcohol or exhaustion, that's what Charles gets too.

"I could take them over completely, I suppose," Charles had said, gazing intently down at the stage, "but I'm not… I don't want to do that." Erik had dutifully ignored Charles's rather blurry moral line; Charles had glared at him anyway, "I don't need to read your mind to know what you're thinking. Anyway, I don't know what would happen to someone if they had me _and_ a tab of acid in their brain. Or me for that matter."

A few rain drops land, flat and hard, on Erik's head, the stretch of his thigh. Angel cranes her head to look up, then back down at the blanket spread across the ground, the beer cans and the scattered packages of food.

"We should – " she begins, and like that, the sky opens up.

Erik sprints inside the bus – not the Levine Machine, but the contraption that's brought Alex, Angel, and Sean here – gasping and laughing. He's dizzy from the beer and the long day, possibly a contact high, and also – also Charles is looking at him, eyes sharpening from the softness they take whenever he's wrapped up in someone else's skull. Time spins its wheels and goes nowhere, and he's faintly aware of other things happening (Alex and Angel pushing by him, rain pelting like bullets, waterfalls down the windscreen), but mostly the world narrows down to Charles.

No one's ever commanded his attention like this, so nothing matters beyond the other person – beyond _Charles_ – drawing the two of them together and sliding close against him, and nothing's as natural as slanting their mouths together and feeling Charles sigh. Like the rest of the day Charles is warm and sticky, slow after the hustle of getting to the concert grounds and wrapping himself neatly around Erik's body, fingers sliding under the waist of his jeans, the quiet emphasis of his chest against Erik's. And then there's his mind, and it'd be scary how fast Erik's gotten used to that, Charles just twining himself into Erik's thoughts, if it didn't feel so damn amazing.

"Get a room," Raven says from some indeterminate distance. It's close enough for Charles to pull himself away and grin up at Erik with that mad, impossible grin, the one that, despite the fact that Erik's never let himself be led around once in his entire life, makes him want to give in. The grin shifts to a sly, sideways smile as they make for the bunk rigged up against the side of the bus, not much more than an antique mattress and a questionable blanket. They tumble in together, already tangled up, Charles humming softly, just enough for Erik to feel the quiet vibration in his chest and throat.

Erik isn't one for contentment, and definitely not for the sort of careless happiness that's been going on more or less all day. Behind him, Raven, Alex, and Angel are talking, something about finding out other mutants at the festival and letting them know about the MLA, and he thinks he probably should be more interested in the discussion. One of the greater victories of the MRA and, even after the MRA's demise, is the fragmentation of mutant society, the way they're taught to fear themselves and hide themselves away like criminals – people like Charles, who'd internalized all that fear, and who shouldn't ever have to hide what they are.

 _We'll get there_ , Charles says absently to him. His mouth spells out something different on Erik's shoulder, _no one lost it today when they saw you airlifting our stuff down here._

That's true, anyway, Erik supposes. Charles snorts. He has a point, though, and Erik has to concede it; most of the attention they'd gotten had been "oh hey man, check it that is fuckin' _awesome,_ man" and even offers to pay in beer, pot, or food if Erik would haul stuff. He'd refused, much to Charles's amusement.

 _I don't know why_. The mental eyeroll is unmistakable. _We could have so much more to drink right now, you realize, and not just what Moira and Raven wanted to bring._ Unceremoniously, Charles reaches across him to paw around for a can of beer. He finds it, cracks the top, and takes a drink, making a face as he does so. Erik watches the mobile flesh of his throat, the red curve of his mouth around the lip of the can, swallows even though his own throat is suddenly dry.

"Raven is depressingly Americanized," Charles says, just loud enough to be provocative. "Budweiser, Raven, really?"

"Oh, I am _so_ terribly sorry about my colonial tastes, my dear chap," Raven says from the back. "I know you must be so cruelly disappointed regarding my choice of beverage, but perhaps you ought to go bugger yourself." A giggle at the end mars the Oxbridge perfection of her accent and everyone laughs.

"Here," Erik says, and fishes under the bed for one of the two bottles of Scotch he'd brought along. Charles's face lights up.

"Ah, civilization," he says as Erik cracks the seal around the cap. They trade the bottle back and forth, and Erik licks the whiskey from the corner of Charles's mouth, the sweaty curve of his neck where some had spilled. If possible, Charles goes even looser against him, miles from the composed and tweedy professor-in-waiting he'd been in Boston. He likes Charles like this, Erik reflects, out of his element and rough at the edges, probably far too much for his own good.

"Enjoy it while it lasts," Charles murmurs. He's turned onto his stomach – barely enough room for the two of them on this thing, really – and is watching Erik closely. Between the alcohol and the long day and the blurry feeling Erik always gets when Charles hangs out in his head, his eyes are more liquid than usual, still that keen blue that's almost unreal but also realer than anything else in the world.

"You're okay so far," Erik asks, allowing a sliver of concern through. Charles catches the meaning (of course he does).

"Let me try something," he says instead of actually answering, and Erik nods wordlessly. Charles's eyes go distant for a moment, his fingers resting on his temple – a childhood habit, he says, it helps him focus – and what he's doing Erik has no idea. Then, after a few seconds, he hears it, _feels_ it, silver notes like bells that chime and fade out and run together, each note dropped distinctly as rain before it spreads and joins with the others. There is space in the music, new dimensions shaped as the chords progress, so solid even in his head that Erik thinks he can see the structure to it.

"The Raga Puriya Dhanashree is played just after sunset," Charles tells him. A drum comes in then, and something else, more bass-like, the beat underpinning the swifter pace of the sitar. Another moment, and Erik catches a glimpse of two men and a woman on the stage, flickering and uncertain, like figures projected against an almost transparent screen, or like hallucinations. The fingers of the man in the center fly across what Erik supposes are the frets of his sitar, running up and down the strings swift as thought.

Slowly the vision fades – "It's hard concentrating on the view and the music," Charles explains – and they're back in the humid confines of the bus. Charles offers him one of his side-of-the-mouth smiles, the one he gets when he's quietly, deeply satisfied. It's something private, conspiratorial, for just the two of them, and that's another thing Erik likes more than is good for him, _just us two_.

The music plays on, faster and faster to match the rain on the roof.

* * *

He kept quiet after that night, and obediently went to class and _shul_ and even, without a murmur of complaint, played chess with Mrs. Rabinowitz twice every week. Her husband had made the chess set, she told him as they sat on tweedy chairs in the confines of her parlor, motley pieces of wood atop a much finer lacquer-work board, and he pretended to be interested while he played half-heartedly.

"You're a much better player than _that_ ," she'd remarked after the first time, staring down at Erik's tipped-over king. Her accent was breathy, slurred as though she were perpetually at the point of falling back into German or Yiddish, her face made even more severe by the gray hair pulled back in its no-nonsense bun, not a strand out of place. "Now, you shall play properly this next time, yes?"

He did play better, if only, he told himself, to shut her up. "Ah, a capture _en passant_ , very nice, very nice," Mrs. Rabinowitz murmured when he captured a pawn, and "ah, you want the Lucena position" when he began to press forward with his rook. "Tell me, young man, do you study?"

"I suppose I'm just good at it," he muttered, flushing.

"Well, you are quite a natural," she told him. "If you were to study the theory, you would become quite good. Quite, quite good."

He shrugged away from the praise, and from his mother's quieter satisfaction when he brought home good grades, or worse, when Mrs. Rabinowitz would come up to them after prayers and tell her about their games together. Every now and then, the pleasure would melt into concern, and that was even worse.

"You should be out more," his mother would say, studying him from the corner of her eye under cover of preparing her lecture notes. "A boy your age… I suppose I'm getting old, but you could tear yourself from your poor mother's side to go and play football, or go to those dances you young people like doing these days."

"It's not really my thing, Mama," he'd say, which was far gentler than the truth. _I don't have any friends_ , partly because he'd never sought them out, and nowadays mostly because everyone in Killarney – everyone who counted to a fifteen-year-old boy – knew he was a mutant. It really didn't matter that Ireland didn't have a Mutant Registration Act, because everyone kept lists in their heads anyway.

So, he retreated to his bedroom after dinner, sometimes to study, sometimes to lie on his bed and watch ball bearing spin above his head. He added to the collection until his watch and a few coins (he had a stash, twenty pounds and counting) joined the ball bearings and twisted in complex patterns. With such small things the flex of power almost escaped his notice; to keep several small things moving independently took more concentration, a channeling of energy and the anger he knew his mother knew he had but couldn't do anything about.

Every now and then, for practice, he went out to an old scrapyard and shuffled the broken-down cars and oil drums around. And on the mornings after bad days, the workers would come in to find old Fiats and Renaults crushed beyond anything even their compressors could do.

* * *

Saturday morning comes hangover-free – _thank you, Charles_ Charles says for him – but also with the pressing need for water and food.

"I can't actually get rid of your hangover," Charles explains, "I can just make you not feel it; you're still dehydrated."

Food they have and, miraculously, jugs of water. Darwin, who'd taken the bunk over them last night, hands one over, and Erik drinks and drinks and drinks, some of the water splashing down his neck and chest, small accents of cool in a day that's already promising to be warm and humid again. Nearby, Charles watches appreciatively.

The day starts slow. Down in the cup of the hill, the giant stage watches over ground that's been left trampled and muddy. Some people are down there already – or have been down there, wrapped up in plastic and tarps over their sleeping bags, tents here and there. Erik gives thanks for the relative comfort of the bus. Other buses and campers cluster around them, some cars as well, most of them battered and many painted like drug trips, draped with banners and prayer flags. He can smell cigarettes and the heavy earth scent of mud, and the same faint breeze carries with it some stray guitar chords, a girl's unsteady voice picking apart the lyrics to a Joan Baez song. In a corner of the field, someone's started to put up what looks like a screened area for hygiene, and it's a curiously practical thing, Erik thinks, next to so much lazy goodwill.

"We all gotta take care of ourselves, take care of each other," says the young man he helps by unfreezing a reluctant spigot. Water gushes brown for a second, over the young man's bare toes and wetting the hem of his pants. "Thanks, man," the guy says, and fishes in the pocket of his shirt for a cigarette. He hands it to Erik with a smile, and a "Peace, love – take care of yourself" that makes Erik briefly awkward.

A red-headed kid comes by asking if they've got any food. "I _totally_ forgot where the hell my friends are," he says, before introducing himself as Sean Cassidy, eighteen. "There was this girl," he adds, "completely smokin'," and Erik's pretty sure Sean's been smokin' too.

"He's also a mutant," Charles breathes at him, before pushing in front of him and introducing himself.

"Hello, my name is Charles Xavier," he says, and holds out his hand like they're on one of the footpaths at Trinity College. Sean eyes Charles owlishly, transfers his apple to his mouth, and shakes Charles's hand with exaggerated, stoned-out-of-his-mind emphasis. "If you don't mind me asking, what precisely is it you can do?"

"I'm supposed to be studying – oh, you mean like my _power_." Sean nods confidentially. "Here, I'll show you."

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Erik asks Charles, who banishes Erik's concern into the ether with a careless wave and a, "It'll be fine, Erik."

"See that?" Sean points to a beer bottle. "Behold the power of The Voice."

He takes a breath, holds it for a moment as he fumbles for whatever focus he needs.

When he lets it out, the beer bottle trembles. Nearby, the windscreen of a ubiquitous VW Bus cracks across the middle.

"Crap," Sean says.

Charles is delighted.

* * *

He followed the news of mutant registrations in the United States with an obsession that he never questioned. What his mother thought, he couldn't say; probably she disapproved, or didn't understand. If she did, what reassurance could she give?

In 1959, three days after his seventeenth birthday, the United States Supreme Court overturned The Mutant Registration Act.

 _Writing for the majority, Justice William Brennan said, 'The abridgement of privacy and freedom for private individuals, in the absence of the powers of war which allow the executive to suspend habeas corpus, constitutes the abrogation of rights for all private individuals, regardless of race, class, or genetic status. It is the opinion of this court that for the federal government to assume criminal intent without evidence of such presented before a court of law – in effect, to assume the individual guilty of acts which he or she may never have once contemplated committing – constitutes a gross violation of the principles on which this country's freedoms are based._

Erik's heart thumped once, twice, then a third time, hard against the wall of his chest. Across the room, his mother got up from her work and came to him, a gentle hand on his shoulder. She was crying, he thought vaguely; he could see the tears on her cheek.

 _Some Americans_ , the newscaster continued, _have taken to the streets both to celebrate and protest the ruling. In Atlanta, Detroit, and New York, riots broke out when branches of the so-called Friends of Humanity, an anti-mutant group, clashed with mutants and pro-mutant supporters._

Footage from the air, the helicopter's shadow slithering over the buildings of a city Erik had never seen. Far, far below in the canyons a mass swarmed. Cut to street level, the camera jumping up and down, and the faces contorted, snarling, animal, and the shouts grated into static, _Dirty mutant freaks – hell no, we won't go – equal rights for all – die you unnatural pieces of –_

"It is a beginning," his mother said, pressing a kiss to the top of his head. Erik tried to hold on to the justice's words, the fleeting memory of a greenskin girl pushing aside a hulking man twice her size, tried and found himself submerged, thinking of that blind fury, the man's hand reaching out to take the greenskin girl by the throat.

* * *

"I _am_ going to go get cleaned off," Charles says with his usual authority, which means there's nothing for it but to do what Charles wants and grab a towel, and head down to the pond Charles had spied out earlier.

"We're just going to get dirty again anyway," Erik pointed out as they threaded their way through the crowd. He has to step over people more often than not.

"It's not like the pond is going anywhere."

Erik – as is becoming the case more and more often – lets himself follow along in Charles's wake. It's maybe a quarter-mile to the pond, where it nestles in a stand of trees downslope from the tent city and their bus, but it's also a solid quarter-mile of humanity, a thicket of legs and arms and bodies. It's girls with blissed-out expressions and sometimes no shirts, draped over their boyfriends or husbands, maybe, for all Erik knows, boys they've picked up for the night or the weekend. One girl reclines on her towel like a throne, her breasts bare and pale under a collection of bead and seashell necklaces, a boy's head on her lap. He laughs absently as she combs her fingers through his beard.

Charles shivers a little, tremble of flesh that telegraphs itself through the fingers he has twined through Erik's own.

They reach the pond, a collection of languid men and women gathered around it and talking idly. Erik undresses automatically ("Don't worry man, we'll keep an eye on your shit, don't you worry") and watches as Charles skins out of his t-shirt, the lithe twist of his spine running down to where his back hollows out, the cup of warm flesh that Erik loves to touch. He's acquired freckles across his shoulders and arms, the skin paler where his shirt has been.

There isn't much ceremony in Charles as he kicks off his shoes, strips his jeans, and splashes in. Erik follows, shuddering as the water closes cold around his ankles, his calves, the back of his knees. Idly, he flicks some water at Charles's back, and Charles shivers again, a delicious movement that Erik very much wants to taste. Charles retaliates, and really, the only thing for Erik to do is tackle him, never mind that the water's so cold it leaves him breathless and stunned, his mind blank of everything except Charles's arms wrapped solidly around his chest.

When they pop to the surface, Charles is already grinning. He probably has been, unabashed delight in Erik and playing around and being wonderfully irresponsible. Those last two things, Erik suspects Charles isn't terribly familiar with; the first, he's figuring out. It's strange to him, too, the prospect of four days without much of a purpose beyond listening to music and drinking, finding places to have sex.

 _Oh, we can do that anywhere_ , Charles says, his mental voice lazy. Erik grins at him, has to kiss him, rub a thumb against his nipple in the safe obscurity of the water. Charles shudders and sighs, hot mouth and hot breath, "God, you're perfect," Erik tells him, not caring that he's speaking out loud or that Charles is almost swallowing down the words. Charles licks at him, _I know_ , and the sense of him in Erik's head stutters as Erik wraps a hand around his cock.

 _Erik_ , Charles thinks, like the thought is torn from him. "Oh god," as Erik twists his wrist and Charles's head drops on a gasp, mouth open and disbelieving, his fingers slipping and clutching at Erik's hips. _That, that, don't stop – please –_ , his coherence fracturing and taking Erik's with it, _come on_ Erik says, not sure if it's his voice or his mind, but everything in him wants Charles just to break apart and finish.

Charles does, with a small half-stifled cry and a twist of his body up and _into_ Erik, his forehead pressed against Erik's collar bone. His orgasm hits Erik like thunder.

"Are you settling in?" Charles asks, once they come back to themselves. The water is cold on Erik's skin, Charles's thoughts much hotter where they're pressed against his own, _need you want you come here stay with me_. "Is it as awful as you thought it was going to be?"

"It's not completely horrible," Erik tells him, lets Charles muffle his laughter in the curve of his shoulder.

* * *

During his incarceration two years ago, Erik had begun to pick up the post on his way home from classes. It began as a silent way to maximize his time outside the flat, and to buy a bit of fruit or candy or something to make the tedium of homework, reading, and practicing chess for Mrs. Rabinowitz more bearable. After his mother relented and allowed him to "go roaming again," as she said, he still stopped by the post office every day.

The spring of his seventeenth year, in the middle of the desperate rush to his certificate exams, brought a letter from Trinity College, Cambridge. He felt the weight of it, thick papers folded together and looked at his name, _Mr. Erik Lehnsherr_ and address typed neatly on the envelope, the fancy embossing of the college's name in the top corner.

"Looks like big news for you," said the lady behind the till.

"Yes, ma'am," Erik said faintly.

"Are you going to open it?"

He did, because it seemed like the thing to do, with the till lady hovering expectantly over his shoulder.

"I… I got accepted," he told her.

"Well, that's grand, then," she said.

He took the news home with it, bubbling over at the edges with excitement-disbelief-anticipation. He'd applied to Cambridge because of the work in particle physics at the Cavendish, and at the time he'd had his usual quiet certainty that he'd be accepted. His teachers and tutors said his grasp of the physical principles was beyond anything they'd seen, he _understood_ the natural forces in a way that, Father O'Brien said, "is almost uncanny, really." That was him, the part of him that could invisibly exert itself on the world, so tightly woven in it was part of the way he thought.

Killarney bustled with late-afternoon traffic, people spilling out into the veins of its cobbled streets and the cars bumping down the asphalt high street. He wound his way through the crowds, paying them less attention than he usually did. Even at full buzz, Killarney was strangely tranquil, as though the surface activity could not quite penetrate something much older, something permanent – something he was, Erik realized abruptly, was going to _leave_.

His mother was home when he let himself in, by her old satchel at the door and shopping on the counter. The kitchen was dark, one light on in the living room.

"Mama?" He burst into the living room, the letter almost crumpled in his hand, he's holding it so tightly. "Mama, I have – what? What's wrong?"

Cautiously, the excitement bled out of him, he approached her desk. Her hands were folded atop its tidy surface, and her hands were themselves neat, composed, only the glitter of a silver bracelet and her wedding ring to set them off. She smiled up at him and nodded to the easy chair.

"Mama," he said, not moving. She smiled up at him, and took one of his hands the way she usually did when marveling over how tall he'd grown. _You'll be taller than your father_ , she would say, _my little boy, grown so big_. He squeezed her hand before pulling back, and had to swallow around the fear before speaking.

" _Mama_ , what is it?" And he knew by her face what was coming.

"Erik, I have been to the doctor today," his mother said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The musician Erik and Charles are listening to is Ravi Shankar, and you can see his "Raga Manj Kmahaj," the final song of his Woodstock set with Ustad Alla Rakha (tabla) and Kamala Chakravarthy (tanpura), [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uz8vZHLohJY).
> 
> It's hard trying to write about music in general, but classical Indian music is even harder. It's such a distinctive, textured sound, and there's no way I could possibly do it justice.


	3. Chapter three

**Chapter three**

They spend Saturday morning quietly, recovering from a night passed with music saturating the air. Well, Erik spends it quietly; he remembers, in a hallucinatory sort of way, Joan Baez singing him to sleep and a chariot coming for to carry him home, and he's slow to shake it. Charles, despite being exhausted – and he's in there with whatever crazy dreams Erik had had last night – had gone off to help with food distribution, because he's irritatingly noble. He comes back covered with instant oatmeal powder up to his elbows and stumbling with exhaustion, and it doesn't take much for Erik to convince him to sack out for a while.

"I'm not going to your funeral if you transplant yourself into someone else's body, or whatever." Charles snorts and rubs his unshaven chin absently against Erik's shoulder. "I mean it," Erik adds.

Charles makes a nondescript noise. "What are the kids getting up to?"

"Raven hates it when you call her that," Erik reminds him. "And they're talking."

Raven, Hank, Alex, and Angel huddle together outside the bus's emergency exit, trying for conspiratorial, but every now and then someone's voice rises – usually Raven's – and the argument spills over the edges of their circle. Sean wanders in and out of the discussion, and Erik listens while trying to pretend he's not listening and is instead reading German poetry to Charles – to Charles who listens with his eyes glazed over, his presence warm in the corner of Erik's mind as he listens to the German in Erik's head.

 _Weder Kindheit noch Zukunft_ , he reads, trying to remember the precise rhythms of Rilke's lines, _werden weniger – Überzähliges Dasein entspringt mir im Herzen._

Charles mumbles something about infinite presence -- _Neither childhood nor future lessen, Erik, that's lovely_ and stretches. Erik tries to shake the poetry, but it stays stuck in his head, _Was, wen Verwandlung nicht, ist dein drängender Auftrag?_

"Was Sean smoking up right in my face last night?" he asks foggily. Charles laughs low in his throat, then shushes him.

Raven's mid-tirade, her voice pulled tight with exasperation. "I'm _saying_ , we've achieved acceptance in places like Berkeley, but it's one thing for people to say 'I'm completely fine with mutants' and another to say 'I'm completely fine with mutants as long as I don't have to think about them.'" Erik recognizes the argument; it's one he's made himself a lot of times. Charles sighs, a frown tugging at the corner of his mouth.

"You get that assimilationist bullshit everywhere, man. Even New York. Fucking _New York._ You should ask Charles about Boston." Alex laughs in response to the suggestion and says, "I think he'd kill me if we went in there. Or Erik would."

"It's all about integration as long as you don't draw attention to yourself," Raven continues as if Alex hadn't said anything, "and is that any way to live? I mean, it's imperialist bullshit to tell someone they have to give up their own culture to become American."

"But there's a difference between accepting who you are and, I don't know, _scaring_ people," Hank interjects hesitantly. He's been going around barefoot all weekend, and Erik has no idea how long that'll last outside this strange space they've carved out for themselves. It's too easy to imagine Hank slipping his shoes back on the moment they get back to civilization. "And, no offense guys, but… I don't see how we can expect to have rights when some people think they ought to take away everyone else's right to security."

"We're not talking about random violence, for god's sake," Angel said. The hum of her wings ran under her words. "See, that's the problem with you integrationists – you think it's all random and pointless and shit, and it's not true."

"Then what about those of us who can't engage in _directed_ violence, or whatever?" Hank asks. He strikes Erik as a mild-mannered guy most of the time, straight-up Clark Kent, but his words have an edge, danger grinding each syllable sharp. "Maybe those of us who _shouldn't_?"

Erik thinks, uncomfortably, of his mother, of the thousands of times he'd seen injustice, or read about it, and ached to lash out. It turns to an itch, sometimes, when he thinks about the Society, and mutants locking themselves and _what they are_ away, like whatever tiny chemical twitch that makes them _them_ is something to be ashamed of. The thought ties knots of anger in his throat and tightens his breath; next to him, Charles go stiff and quiet, hesitant in his mind.

"Internalized staticism – the status quo is always better, _safer_ ," Raven growls.

The spike of bitterness in her voice is for Hank, and very likely for Charles. Charles flinches, an abrupt shiver of hurt reflected across Erik's awareness. Charles _has_ come a long way since they'd first met, Erik knows, the exercise of his power more assured, and it's beautiful to watch sometimes, even if Charles sometimes withdraws afterwards and his inner arguments worry at Erik for the rest of the day.

"She has a point," Erik says, pitching his voice low.

"Please don't," Charles says, back in the real world now. His expression is still foggy, but clearing up. "I would rather not waste my energies on a perpetual disagreement when I could use them better elsewhere."

"They probably won't thank you for the condescension." _They – the people who hate us – they want us like this_ , he tells Charles silently, _at each other's throats instead of fighting them, wasting time and effort fighting among ourselves instead of our real enemies._

 _I know_ , Charles says, his mental voice terse. Erik has the sense of withdrawal, of Charles receding back into his own skull. A stirring next to him, and Charles is sitting up, stretching his neck

"What about you, Darwin?" Charles asks, looking directly at Darwin and for all intents and purposes ignoring Erik utterly.

Darwin, who's been silently auditing the conversation, looks up from his guitar. "Don't know, man. I figure we all have our own way of fighting with it." This earns a twitch of eagerness from Charles, and maybe a telepathic _could you expand on that?_ like they're in the lecture hall and Charles wants a more detailed answer.

"Some fight, some pray," Darwin shrugs, picks meditatively at the guitar. The chord progression is slow, heavy at first, before rippling to life, something bluesy Erik can't put a name to. "We don't all have the same experiences. I got shit dumped on me for what I look like, but I never really had to deal with my mutation; I manifested when I was seven and fell off my apartment's balcony. Three stories, and I didn't break a bone. My mom, she wouldn't have cared if the devil had saved me, she was that relieved. I kept myself low, didn't get put on the Register, had enough to deal with keeping my head above water. That's not true for everyone, though. I don't think all of us are adapted to do the same thing, dig?"

Charles is nodding thoughtfully. Outside the bus, the MLA has fallen silent. Darwin winces and turns back to his guitar. "Point is, they want us fighting each other," and maybe Darwin's also the telepath here, "they don't want us fighting them."

"Then maybe you pacifists should keep the hell out of our business," Angel says. This earns a mutter of agreement from Raven.

"Oh, for…" Charles surges up and out of bed. "I'm going to wander around for a while," he tells Erik with his usual, faultless decorum. Underneath the words runs a current of _leave me alone leave me alone leave me alone_. The bus shakes as he stalks out, the suspension creaking under swift and impatient footsteps.

"Erik?" When he twists around to look out the rear emergency door, Raven's looking back at him, concern written in her alien eyes.

"Sore spot," Erik says. Raven sighs and mutters something Erik's pretty sure he's not supposed to hear.

"What do _you_ think, Erik?" Raven asks him.

Mostly, Erik thinks he feels too old to deal with this, some days. He's twenty-seven years old, and twenty-two of those years he's spent with anger and fear, and anger at the fear. He loves what he does, but hates the privilege that allows him to camouflage himself; his rebellion isn't like what makes the news at nights, destroying now-defunct MRA offices or harassing anti-mutant groups. It could be, and sometimes he aches for it, to bend and break and _force_ the knowledge of his pain and anger into another's awareness. Some days, he isn't entirely sure what keeps him back from that edge.

Instead of saying this, he says, "I think Darwin's right; you're not going to convince each other. But that doesn't excuse you from not thinking about why you're doing what you're doing, and if you really want change – or if you want to be angry."

"Is Charles making you say that?" Raven doesn't sound like she's joking.

It's pretty low, even for siblings who know how to hurt each other, and it doesn't matter that Charles is god knows where. Erik shakes his head at her, and she withdraws, and he's left hanging there, wanting to explain he knows how she feels – that he agrees, not so deep down where his anger is, he thinks she's right. Only, Charles is right too (Charles, Erik thinks with a laugh, and his mother), and there's got to be some balance somewhere, surely, between hiding and lashing out.

Realizing this reorders the world, nothing earth-shattering, there's no heavenly music, but he feels the _shift_ , like something blurry clicking into focus.

 

He has no idea if Charles can hear him over the telepathic clamor of half a million minds, but tries anyway, tossing his _Where are you?_ out like a flare, the peculiar pitch of thought that seems to attract Charles's attention. At first he gets only the silence of the inside of his own head, but then the sense of Charles like a gentle hand on his shoulder to turn him around.

 _Down this way_ , Charles says, and the sight-impression of a path that snakes through crowds and crowds of people, past the food tents and down into the shallow amphitheater of the hill.

He finds Charles halfway through the set, surrounded by people on tarps and towels, some of them dancing but most of them sitting and listening with various levels of attentiveness. Charles is one of the ones blessed with a tarp, and he shifts over a little to give Erik room. The mud-smell closes around him, salt and minerals with an actual weight to it. Charles is sitting with his forearms resting on drawn-up knees, ostensibly paying attention to the music and not the couple making out in front of them.

Downhill, John Sebastian works his slow way through "I Had a Dream," _we all were all right, happy in that land of ours_. Charles nods his head along absently to the heavy step of the guitar.

"Charles," Erik starts, half-wondering if they shouldn't do this telepathically.

"I apologize," Charles says abruptly and out loud. The courtesy doesn't quite fit with his mud-splattered jeans, some of that mud dried along his arm. He needs a shave – or maybe he doesn't; Erik likes him like this. Charles offers him one of his slight sideways grins, the knowing ones that say he's amused with whatever he's picking up from Erik. "I do, though, Erik. It's an old debate in my family, between me and my sister particularly. It gets… heated, very quickly."

Erik nods and waits for Charles to go on. The pause stretches, Charles's eyes lidded and distant.

Eventually, Charles says, "I spent _years_ convinced Mother was going to get rid of Raven." His head lolls as though he's suddenly tired, chin touching his chest. "Even after she could control her transformations… even…" he comes back to himself when Erik nudges him, slowly, slowly, "… she never wanted to adopt Raven in the first place. My dad convinced her."

"Why'd your dad do it?"

"I don't know." In the distance, a speaker wails with feedback. A few people dancing pause before picking the beat back up again. Charles stares at them and through them, into some private Charles-distance. "Well, no, I think I do now. I didn't always. When I was little I thought it was because he felt sad for her… her mother had abandoned her just after she was born, and everyone in the hospital was talking about it. But now, I think it was because she was a mutant, and a mutant _from birth_ , not someone who manifested later or whose mutation was… was artificially induced. It wasn't that he wanted to give her a loving home, although maybe it was part of it, but because she'd be interesting to study. He grew to love her, I know, but at first I think it was the possibility of having another mutant in the house."

That's so many kinds of fucked up, Erik has no words for it. He lets the silence ride, space for Charles to speak on his own time. His own thoughts come chasing in, of being a boy and hearing about the Mutant Registration Act, and later, the experiments conducted by the American and the Allies during the war – the ones they're probably still conducting. He considers the possibility that he'd read about Brian Xavier's work at some point.

"My mother probably knew that, too." Charles digs a foot into the mud of the hillside and shifts it around. "I had to… I had to _convince_ her to keep Raven, after my father died." Charles leans on the _convince_ enough to indicate how that convincing had happened.

"I'm sorry, Charles." The honesty is pulled from him, by surprise and unexpected pain. He still isn't used to feeling hurt for other people, for the pain of Charles's rejection. He tries to imagine his own mother looking at him as though he were an alien, an unwelcome thing intruding on her, and fails.

"She was young when the Registration Act passed," Charles sighs. He's leaning into Erik now, the surprisingly substantial weight of him pressed along Erik's right arm. "I had to be afraid for both of us until she could control her transformations… And I was still afraid because." He stops, so sudden Erik's almost startled. "Because – it's very hard, _very_ hard, changing someone's mind for them with they have a set, ineradicable prejudice, when it's sunk so deep in them you can't dig it out. On days when we heard news of mutants from America, or if something happened in England – did you hear, when the Braddocks came out as mutants? – if _anything_ mutant-related came up on the news, I'd have to be fast and make sure my mother either forgot about it, or she didn't care.

"You would have done the same thing," Charles says. "If you'd been in my place."

Erik has experience of society wanting him to not exist, but he struggles to fit his mind around the possibility of his mother thinking the same thing – of having a little brother or sister to defend from it. He can't do it, and by the rueful twist to Charles's mouth, Charles knows it.

"I was too busy hiding us, to be angry about it." There's a brittleness to Charles's voice, like maybe he's angry _now_ , and confused about it, and he turns away with a telepathic _let's drop this for now, shall we? The music's good_ , and a nudge (Erik can feel it) to suggest the music's worth listening to.

Erik leans back on his elbows and lets the endless ripple of the guitar wash over him, and the lingering heat.

* * *

"The lymphoma is not terribly advanced," the doctor said, voice rote as he read from whatever memorized script he had for situations like these. The head mirror peered at Erik like a glassy third eye. "Our tests showed it's Hodgkin's – fortunate, because it _is_ treatable. A course of radiation, tests to monitor the tumor, making sure she keeps her strength up as best she can… She has a good chance."

Erik had his mind wrapped around the metal of the IV stand, running up and down it anxiously. The stand quivered and the doctor flinched. Next to him, his mother said "Erik, darling" in the way she always did when Erik did something to test her patience. With a sidelong glance at Erik, the doctor hid behind the safety of his charts and from that point on spoke either to Erik's mother or his clipboard.

Most of it passed unheard. Erik stared at his mother fixedly, already half-expecting her to vanish if he looked away. She divided her attention between him and the doctor, sparing him a gentle smile on occasion when not nodding in response to the doctor's recommendations. _Dublin_ , the doctor said, _it would be more advisable, if you have a place to stay there. The treatments there are the latest… I can refer you directly…_ and on and on until the IV stand warped and groaned and Erik found himself breathing in time with the incremental buckling of the steel.

At last the doctor vanished, off to give someone else terrible news. Erik glared balefully at the white lab coat as the doctor retreated and fought the urge to run after him, to demand to know for sure what it was he hadn't said. And somewhere not too deep down he wanted to rail and shout, and demand to know if the doctor knew how unfair it was, what they'd been through and now this.

"Well, then," his mother said as she slid off the cot and began to gather her things, "we should probably go now, Erik." She moved with all her neat economy, setting her scarf loosely around her shoulders, folding her coat atop her handbag and taking her gloves from the pocket. In one hand she had a scrap of paper, the number of the mysterious, all-healing doctor in Dublin. She walked like always, her steps quick and practical – "no point in dawdling when there are things to be done" – and her dark eyes seemed untroubled on the surface.

"I'll stay to take care of you, Mama," Erik said. He pitched his voice low, for the echoing halls. An indifferent nurse, and two indifferent nuns, bustled past them.

"You have your first term starting in October," his mother said, as if she hadn't heard a word out of his mouth, "and I won't hear of you putting off your studies. You heard Dr. Gray; my own doctor caught it quite early, and my prognosis is good."

But Erik had heard the gaps and the silences, and the other words the doctor didn't say.

" _I'm not going anywhere_." Legions of reasons marshaled themselves behind the words, but he couldn't speak them; the most powerful one, _I can't leave you because when I leave you, you'll be taken_ was too big to say.

"I… I could defer, maybe," he said when he could trust his voice again. "When you're better, I could start then. I could work and take care of the flat for you. And play chess with Mrs. Rabinowitz."

"You _are_ determined." His mother squeezed his arm. "I'd planned to argue with you about this, but… but I will be glad to have you with me, _schatzi_. So, so very glad."

"Don't worry, Mama. I'll be here."

He held her hand, tight, tight, and he would have embraced her with the invisible arms of his abilities, if he could, if he knew how, if he thought it would keep her safe. He thought, for a wild moment, of learning enough about himself to fix her – that there had to be something in him good for more than the breaking and tearing that obsessed him. Only there was nothing, so far as he could find, only a seventeen-year-old's fear and powerlessness.

* * *

Somewhere in the afternoon he'd lost the thread of time, and now he's strung out on days and hours and weeks, maybe. His heartbeat knocks against his ribs, and his ribs vibrate in time with it; they push against his skin, and his skin is reshaped by the pressure of sound against it, long ripples and tides of it that make patterns in the air and lie with actual weight against his body. Or – or maybe that's Charles, he's not entirely sure, and for that matter he's not entirely sure where Charles ends and he starts, or however it goes. They're twisted together like interlace, like the thin metal bracelet Erik had taken from a girl and is now reshaping to match the whorls and patterns of electric guitar and bass and drums.

"That is so fucking badass," the girl sighs. Through Charles, Erik picks up her awe; it's a fuzzy, faint sensation, blending in with visions of – Charles giggles – the end of infinity. _The human mind is such a remarkable thing_ , Charles says, sounding almost professorial, before trailing off into less coherent thoughts that are a simple, animal satisfaction and pride in what Erik can do.

One of the other guys hanging around agrees, "Totally badass," and introduces himself as Leo. Erik tries to hold onto the name, but it slips through his grasp and swims away. What stays longer is the fact that he's _glowing_ , not in a drug-trip way, but _Genuine bioluminescence_ , Charles thinks excitedly.

"It isn't good for much," the guy, Leland, says, "but I don't trip over shit in the dark."

"That's very important," Erik says solemnly, and the nameless girl agrees.

Charles laughs-sighs into Erik's chest, breath gusting across the yellow and red concentric circles he'd painted around Erik's right nipple. The rest of Erik's torso is an unsteady collage of blue arrows, green suns, and some design over his heart that Charles insists is a reproduction of _Starry Night_.

Of course Charles picks up on the memory, tugs at it so it unfurls and spreads across all of Erik's awareness, and the music and the girl and Leland fall away so it's Charles sitting astride him and gloriously shirtless and paint-spattered. He doesn't have a paintbrush, _but I don't need one_ , he says to Erik very sensibly pointing this out. What he does have is long, clever fingers that dip into the container of paint as vibrantly yellow as sunflowers, fingers that drip and are warm when he sets them against Erik's chest to draw the first circles there.

When he bends down to breathe the wetness from the paint, Erik shivers and jolts, and his body tries to push up and into Charles, who laughs his low, delicious laugh and licks at the humid valley beneath Erik's chin.

 _You'd be so perfect, stretched out here like this_ , Charles tells him as he withdraws. He picks up the pot of blue paint, cobalt almost as rich as Charles's eyes. Charles stares at him, heavy-eyed and solemn, as he pours paint over his hand, ribbons of blue spilling from the cup of his palm. Shifting back, he rubs his hands together, smearing the paint up to his wrists (wrists that Erik irrationally wants to grasp so he can lick and nip at the fine bones of Charles's knuckles), and then, still _looking_ , mind blending together with Erik's like the paint on Erik's chest, he presses his palms to the subdued hollows above Erik's hips.

 _So perfect_ , Charles thinks, lazy and exultant at the same time, and bends down to kiss him, licking even as Erik opens for him, and the memory of that kiss mixes with the _now_ , the fading sun catching the edges of the bracelet he's long since stopped twisting, Charles curled at his side.

He needs a moment to catch himself, coming down _hard_ , like hitting the ground after falling from a high window. His body resolves around him, cells and tissue and bone and the safe, paint-marked boundaries of his skin. Charles has faded out of his head, maybe faintly there, or that could be the echo Erik gets after Charles has pulled away. Slowly the echo blends back into the other noise of Erik's head, and the only way he has of knowing Charles is here is the physical fact of his presence: the fingers on his chest, the quiet pulse of his body as he breathes.

The breaths come slow and deep, Charles out for the count. Unfortunately for him, Erik's right arm is falling asleep and he's dying of thirst and working on being hungry.

"Charles?" He touches Charles's face, runs a thumb across his shuttered eyes. "Charles," he tries again, "get your arse in gear, we're going back to the bus."

Nothing answers him, only slow breath warm against the sudden chill.

" _Charles?_ "

 _Charles?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It looks like this is going to end up being four parts. The ideas kept coming, gah.
> 
> For the curious, the music Erik and Charles are listening to in the third section is Santana's "Soul Sacrifice." The Woodstock performance of it is [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLDalZ4-53g) (NSFW video; it's from the Woodstock documentary, which I highly recommend).


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter four**

 

His mother's poetry book had more pages dog-eared than not, annotations in her small hand filling the margins and sometimes the spaces between lines. By the time he picked it up to pass time while the doctors dripped poison in his mother's vein, he knew it better than any of his science books, better than the Tanakh, his favorite novels. The book itself was small, bound in a plain navy cover; a relative had made it for her, a miscellany of German, French, and Hebrew poems a teenaged girl liked best, with newer leaves added in the back, some typed and some hand-written. If there'd been a table of contents, it had long since fallen out, and Erik supposed his mother didn't need it anymore.

"I like to hear you read," his mother said when Erik pointed out she would softly recite every poem along with him. And that had become the ritual through endless rounds of treatments, Erik making his way through Rilke or Villon or Bat-Miriam, with various degrees of competence.

" _… Aber dein Antlitz wärmt meine Welt_ ," Erik read, carefully shaping his mind and his tongue to the rhythms of the verse, " _Von dir geht alles Blühen aus_."

"Ah, that is so lovely," his mother sighed. A finger, long, skin translucent over the bone, traced the words on the coverlet. " _But your face warms my world_ – it doesn't sound so right in English, does it?" Erik shook his head; his mother finished the next verse, _Wenn du mich ansiehst, wird mein Herz süß_ , her dry voice cracking around the words.

Erik set the book down on the bedside table. "You met her once, Mama."

"Else Schüler? Yes." The smile on his mother's face was, unlike the rest of her, not ephemeral. "I was visiting relatives in Berlin. I was much younger than her, of course; it was not long before she left for Switzerland. _Strahl in Strahl, verliebte Farben_ – such a gift with words! I wanted to be a poet, you know, and I was very shy. I couldn't speak to her beyond giving her my name."

"Maybe you should rest." Erik made himself keep his hands still by hers; touching her, he thought, might disintegrate her. Inside him, his power coiled, helpless. "The doctor said your last treatment is tomorrow."

"That's what he said the last time." She breathed something indelicate, something that would get Erik lectured even now. She turned to him, eyes dull and dark from the medicine, and under them the skin had purpled, smudges of exhaustion above the pallor of her cheeks. "You must, Erik, take better care of yourself."

"Get some sleep, Mama," Erik insisted. "Don't worry about me."

"I have been resting, for almost a year now," his mother said irritably. "If you read some more, I'll consider sleeping."

"Promise." He picked up the book again, a tattered thing, time and use staining its pages. The pages had not yet rested; he found his place: _Ich liege unter deinem Lächeln, und lerne Tag und Nacht bereiten_ , he read, trying not to think of a year in and out of the hospital, a tumor that had wrapped itself in his mother's body and refused to budge.

* * *

He doesn't know how he got Charles back to the bus, only that he did, that Charles weighs more than he'd thought, that the bus is ridiculously inadequate – the bed strewn with sweaty sheets (Charles's face pale against scarlet-blue-green), surrounded with smoke and alcohol and diesel – that he can see only a thin skim of white under Charles's eyelids. The skin under Erik's palm has stayed warm, damp with a sweat the humid air won't evaporate. Alex, who seems to know about these things in a rough-and-ready sort of way, works out that Charles's breath and his heartbeat both come slow, but enough. Charles's pulse flicks steadily against the pressure of Erik's thumb, counting off long seconds.

"He's stable," Alex says, rolling his shoulders, "but hell if I know what's up."

"Has this ever happened?" Erik asks Raven, who's put aside her anger at Charles in favor of clutching his hand and ordering him to wake up. Fear sits oddly in her yellow eyes, her mouth thin with it.

"No, no," Raven murmurs, "he's always been careful. We lived in London, he's been in _Boston_ for years now. I don't – I _don't know_." She spares a flicker of attention for Erik. "Didn't you _notice_ anything?"

"No."

And he should have, and that's what stings and what cuts, even though Erik's never made it a policy to look out for other people who should be capable of looking out for themselves. _Except the people you care about_ , which is a vanishingly small list. Charles is on it, and simply being on it means he's claimed things from Erik, things Erik hadn't ever really known he'd had to give until – until just now, really. He tries for the anger he's used to relying on in the face of difficulty, but it refuses to come; the fear sits like a haze over his thoughts.

When he _thinks_ at Charles, increasingly impatient repetitions of Charles's name, instructions to wake up, nothing answers except an emptiness Erik never wants to hear again. Behind him, Moira and the others talk about what they need to do, their voices buzzing, tossing suggestions back and forth. Moira wonders if it's wise to move him, Raven says they should get him away from the confusion of hundreds of thousands of people – "When we lived here, we had a doctor," she says, "a specialist. We should find one. I don't think the doctor in Westchester is practicing anymore."

"The closest hospital that treats mutants is probably back in the city," Darwin's saying. "Hank here's strong; if we can get back to your car, we could make it down, maybe." Angel says something about how _real_ acceptance would mean they could find some kind of help without driving for hours.

"Maybe we could leave the fucking politics aside," Erik suggests, edge of a growl, and Angel subsides, abashed. Her words spark enough of the anger to clear his thoughts and kick his brain back in gear. Beneath him, Charles continues on, unresponsive. There's a smudge of dirt on his cheek, a streak that follows the path Erik's thumb had taken earlier.

Raven asks Darwin if he thinks his mutation could adapt to other people's needs, not only his own. Darwin shakes his head, "I don't think so; if I thought Charles was attacking me, maybe, but… it's defensive, you know? I don't want to try and fuck with his mind, not knowing what I'm doing in there."

"So we'll have to find a telepath," Erik says. "I don't suppose you brought another one with you."

"There were a couple at Berkeley, but they didn't come east with us," Angel says.

"Then we're getting him out of here for now," Erik decides. It's worked in the past, in Washington when he'd had to get Charles out of the roadhouse, and even in the quiet boundaries of Erik's apartment, with Charles's mind tethered firmly to his, after days when the city had been hot and hectic, and Charles worn out getting ready for the move to California.

 _I only need one thing to focus on_ , Charles had said, the first time he'd tried it, smiling that terrifyingly earnest smile of his, the one that did impossible things to Erik's heart. _You're very easy to focus on._

"I'll give you something to focus on," he tells Charles, making his voice as threatening as he can. Charles, the idiot, doesn't wake up.

The younger mutants are all looking at him – Raven, Hank, Alex, Angel, Darwin, Sean – and even Moira. They want something from him, what Erik wants from himself, and like before (his mother, he thinks, all over again), he sets fear aside and takes control.

Darwin and Alex have the luggage rack cleared of beer and duffel bags in seconds. After Erik and Raven move Charles off the cot, Erik pops the rivets bolting its mattress to the frame and Hank straps the cot and luggage rack together. _You're unnecessarily heavy_ , Erik informs Charles as he deposits Charles's silent self on their impromptu stretcher. He's no burden, though, to Erik's power, even as Erik hopes the flex of his abilities might, as it often does, attract Charles's attention.

It doesn't.

They get _looks_ now, a mix of worry-intrigue-fear, as many people edging away, or carefully not looking, as come up to ask if Charles is okay, if there's anything they can do. It makes Erik reconsider the second part of his plan, to get Charles to the medics' station and have the ambulance take them back to their van, but the sooner they get out of here the better, the sooner they get _somewhere_ other than here, where they can find some kind of help. Erik doesn't need much to break into a jog, Raven trotting to keep up.

The medic station isn't far, hidden in a thicket of tents and latrines and half-sunk in the mud that coats everything. The medics themselves stick out, neatly uniformed even as they lean against their ambulance for a smoke and seem more interested in watching the girls than keeping an eye on their handful of patients. Charles and the luggage rack distract them, and it's with a kind of savage, bitter pride that Erik sees them straighten up and drop their forgotten cigarettes and look between Erik and Charles by his side.

 

"I only want a ride back to my car," Erik says before the medics can get any bigoted suggestions in, or refuse to help. "He's fine for now, nothing you can help with."

"Let us figure that out, huh?" one of the medics, a woman a handful of years younger than Erik says. Her dark hair, done in long braids, brush her shoulders and fall across the side of her face as she bends over Charles and pulls his t-shirt up to press her stethoscope to his chest. Her partner takes Charles's temperature and his pulse – normal, normal, normal, Erik thinks impatiently, and the first medic asks what they were planning on doing.

"We were going down to the city," Raven says. It earns a grudging nod from the medic – Reyes, her nametag says – and a grunt of agreement, and a suggestion that Columbia has a new program to treat problems deriving from extraordinary mutations. Not the best, Reyes says, but they could help, or at least refer them to someone who could. Erik suppresses the strange conviction that, outside of a telepath, outside of _Charles_ , there's not much help to be had.

As the other medic swings open the ambulance doors and hauls the stretcher out, Reyes tucks the blankets more securely around Charles, who doesn't react at all. Erik wishes he could stop looking and hoping, and settles for gathering his power to himself, working it into the always-present metal puzzle stashed in Charles's duffel. Reyes and her partner competently transfer Charles off the luggage rack and onto the stretcher and have him stowed in short order.

Raven wordlessly climbs into the cab with the other medic.

"Columbia's good," Reyes says quietly to Erik as he brushes by her to get in beside Charles, "but don't go to the Essex Foundation." Her tone dips downward into fear; Erik catches the bare flicker of blue light sparking around her fingertips. "He creeped me out."

* * *

While his mother slept in her narrow bed, Erik worked with metal.

The oncology ward bristled with stainless steel and iron, only barely hidden by the few home things from the flat in Killarney. Against the endless and impersonal white – white sheets tucked into the white-painted bedframe, white wooden table, the white metal chair which makes Erik's back crack and ache – the colorful afghan and photos only emphasized where they were, a small room far from home. It said something, Erik supposed as he twisted three syringe needles into interlocking circlets, that he'd rather have the strange half-life in a town he'd long outgrown.

"You've gotten quite good." His mother's voice was dry and drowsy. Erik flinched and almost dropped the needles; a flicker of concentration saved them and transported them to safety on the table. His mother drank gratefully from the glass of water he'd offered her, throat chafed so much he could hear the thick sound of her swallowing. When the glass was empty, she sighed and settled back. "I'm so proud of you."

"Mama, don't say that." He said this because he heard words other than those spoken.

"It's true." Her hand, dry and cool, closed around his, unexpectedly firm. Carefully, Erik didn't look at the IV set in her arm, how the gauze and tape hid the needle raising the skin inside her elbow.

"This is your last treatment for now," Erik said, striving to change the subject. "We'll go home for good in a few days."

"Of course we will." The words came on a sigh, not much more than unsteady breath. "Erik, you really must – "

"No, Mama."

"It's been over a year now." His mother had the bit in her teeth, the tone in her voice that said Erik, no matter his power, his anger, anything, was her son and he would listen. "A year you've put your life to the side for me. When we're back home, you'll start looking for schools again. You'll start living."

"Not until I know you're well," Erik said.

"Even if you know I won't be." She took his hand in hers, pressed it with a strength Erik hadn't suspected. "You've been tied down so long, in these small places, _schatzi_ … I know you're not happy. Not content."

He wanted to protest that, and say that he couldn't be happy without knowing she'd be with him and healthy. Only she knew him and she was right, and she hadn't missed the restlessness that turned just under his skin, the need to go some place and do something beyond help with odd jobs around town and play chess with his mother's friends. His mother – she was the only thing that tied him down to a place that had never accepted him, the only reason for staying.

"Promise me," his mother insisted.

Erik did.

* * *

Raven drives, her knuckles tight on the wheel, sparking fear all over the place, tangible enough even for Erik, curled in the bench seat with Charles, to sense. Her one concession to leaving the concert is a blouse and skirt, mostly to keep other motorists from staring. Erik, unwilling to concede anything, does what he couldn't do that day driving through New York and forces slow cars onto the shoulder.

They'd needed time to clear the worst of the traffic, and now they're out in the rolling green openness of New York, with its fields populated only by cows and legions of corn. Erik feels the world re-settle itself around him, as though they've passed through some barrier between the strange space of the concert and the reality Erik knows and is comfortable with – the world where it's only himself ( _and Charles_ , he reminds himself, with Charles's head cradled in his lap) and everyone else. The concert already has the quality of a dream, vivid the way his dreams are sometimes when he has Charles in his head, encouraging them to seem more like reality. His body gives him the reality, though, in aches from the crappy bed and the stickiness of sweat, paint, and mud. And Charles, equally disheveled, is real against him; if it's a dream, he's slow to wake up from it.

"Where are we?" he asks, the first words either one of them have spoken since Raven had said _fucking finally_ after they'd gotten away from the concert.

"Middle of nowhere?" Raven offers. She steps harder on the gas and the Levine Machine lurches ahead.

"Maybe we should get to the middle of _somewhere_ ," Erik snaps. Raven growls something Erik's pretty sure he's not supposed to hear.

"I know you're scared," Raven says, more loudly this time. " _I'm_ scared."

"I'm not scared," Erik retorts, "I'm _angry_."

Anger's always served him better than fear in the past. At least anger can vent itself – on metal, on flesh, whether his own or someone else's – while fear can only chew on itself and worry itself to shreds. He'd never been angry at his mother, but at the doctors, the tumor inside her, and beyond them, the knot of prejudice and fear that tightened with every news report he read or saw. And now, now, he wasn't angry with Charles (he couldn't be), but at a world that forced a kid to grow up with no idea of the extent of what he could do, with no place to go if he needed help. Fury burned bright, and he wondered that Charles couldn't see it in the darkness of wherever he'd gone.

"Wake up," Erik says to Charles's sleeping face. _Sleeping_ , he tells himself, watching the slow rise and fall of every breath. "Wake _up_."

* * *

"I hope," his mother said to him as they sat in the waiting room, "that you have some good news for me today."

Erik had the letters stuffed in his satchel, forgotten in his rush to meet his mother at the hospital. She had met him outside the doors, straight and steady in her practical shoes, her old bag slung over one shoulder the way it had been when she would collect him from school and walk him home. Looking at her, the color back in her face and the light back in her eyes, had driven everything else from him, even though she'd of course seen his flushed face and the excitement he couldn't quite keep back.

"I haven't looked yet," Erik admitted. "We can wait until later."

She didn't press, for which he was grateful. A nurse called her back, and Erik watched silently as she collected her purse and stood, and walked slowly through the door.

Almost two years of this, he thought, the last three months spent in hope after the doctor had said he'd found no trace of cancer in her, but when the pneumonia threatened to take her anyway. ( _No no no_ , Erik had thought on those dark nights, listening to his mother struggle for breath, and the dead pauses between the inhale and exhale, _why this why now, please please not now_.) He tried to concentrate on the old magazines and the hypnotically awful pattern in the carpet instead of the letters from Cornell and CalTech and Oxford, on staying in the present and not hoping for the future. His mind rebelled and took the bit and ran on ahead through possibility anyway.

Three months, and maybe after today, they could live again.

* * *

As it turns out, the telepath they need finds them – or they find her, or they find each other, Erik can't say. Whatever it is, it's at a filling station at a crossroads in the middle of the nowhere between Bethel and Westchester. "We might as well fill up now," Raven had said with a shrug, even though the tank's barely dipped past half-full.

Erik heads in to pay while Raven starts to pump, and on his way back out he's stopped almost dead by the blond woman standing by the open door of the van, peering in at Charles. Off to the side, a black limo basks in the afternoon sun.

"So he's the reason for my headache," the woman says when Erik stalks up to her and demands to know what's going on. He knows exactly how intimidating he is; what he's unfamiliar with is someone who doesn't back down when he tries to use his body and his hostility to herd them away. Behind him, Raven slips in next to Charles, her silence wary.

"Do you mind telling me who the hell you are?" Erik asks with deceptive mildness.

"I'm Emma Frost." She eyes Erik's hand – grubby, paint dried in smears across his wrist and with God only knows what crusted under his nails – and accepts his name with a regal nod.

"And you're interested in him why?" He sidles closer to Charles; under the bench seat a crowbar sings with promise.

"Believe me," Emma says tartly, "there is a _very_ long list of places I'd rather be right now. Unfortunately, telepathy doesn't make up for other people's incompetence; my driver took a wrong turn somewhere between the sticks and the boondocks." She gives Charles a considering look, ice-blue eyes narrowing; it's as close to interest as Erik thinks a person like her is ever likely to get. "That's… well. I felt him, of course, but seeing's believing."

"What do you mean?"

Emma frowns austerely at the demand Erik doesn't bother to hide. "I _mean_ , I was minding my own business when I realized my chauffeur had been brainwashed into driving me here, instead of Rhinebeck, and then a moment later I had the worst migraine I've experienced since my abilities manifested." She gestures at Charles, who's still slack and unconscious in the van, her fine mouth pursed in annoyance. "He's lost out there and doesn't quite know how to get home. It's very sad."

"Can you help?" Raven this time, edged with pleading.

"I could," Emma says. Erik catches a flicker of uncertainty, a crack in the iced-over flatness of her voice.

"You will," he tells her. The crowbar inches closer, and the hell if she's a telepath.

Of course, she catches his thoughts effortlessly, a smile curling her lips. "Don't worry, Erik Lehnsherr, I'll help him. If only for who he is, not you… although you're rather adorable when you bristle like that."

"For who he is?" Raven's question goes unanswered as Emma peremptorily pushes her aside and climbs, with unlikely grace, into the van. Where the Levine Machine is a chaos of color and dirt, she is all immaculate white, from her coat to her sundress to the elegant sandals on her feet and the diamonds on her neck and fingers.

"I thought he'd be taller," Emma muses, brushing Charles's forehead with manicured fingers. "And not quite as scruffy."

"You know him." Erik wedges himself in beside her, never mind the heat in the confines of the van, or Emma's sigh of complaint at having someone large, sweaty, and unkempt in her personal space. He's encapsulated with metal; breath comes easier, with the iron and steel of the van around him, and Charles's hand clasped in his.

The look Emma gives him is almost amused. "We telepaths are a small set; we can't help but know about each other. And when one telepath is the son of a _very_ famous scientist and makes a name for himself as a geneticist – and when another telepath happens to be the daughter of a man who owns a company interested in genetic research… well, the chances are good we know of each other."

Emma settles herself into an awkward crouch, curled against the driver's seat and bending over Charles's face to frown down into it. Erik absently traces the lines of tendon and artery in Charles's wrist.

"I've never heard of you," Raven says from her station at the door. "Charles never mentioned you once. How do I know you're not – you're not – " Erik hears the fear in her voice, tightens his hold on the metal around them so it sings anxiously.

"Oh, the opportunity to have an Xavier in my debt might – _might_ – be worth my dry-cleaning bill. Now shut up." Emma touches her fingers to Charles's temple, an odd echo of the gesture Erik's seen Charles employ countless times. "What _were_ you thinking, Xavier?"

Charles doesn't answer. Emma frowns and shifts to a more comfortable position. Even her presence is cool, not terribly reassuring; in her white linen coat and skirt, she reminds Erik more of a doctor than anything. What she could be there to fix, Erik has almost no idea, and even less of an idea as to how she can fix whatever mysterious thing is wrong. All he knows is the strange emptiness in his mind, a space that should be occupied but isn't.

"Did you think you have a special _connection_?" Emma snorts. "I didn't think you looked like the kind who reads romance novels or went in for that… that _sentimentality_. A mind's voice isn't any different from the voice you speak with; he might know what your thoughts sound like, but if your thoughts are one of hundreds of thousands, you're going to get drowned out – unless you have a megaphone, of course."

"What do you need me to do?"

Emma takes a breath, as if for patience, and then takes Erik's free hand. "Think at him. Or reestablish your 'connection,' or however you think about it. He should know that he is where you are. I'll be here to… to amplify your voice, if you will. But he won't listen to me; he won't recognize me, and he's not coherent enough to read my mind. He'll know you, though."

It sounds too close to the sentimental connection Emma's just finished insulting. He does it, though, pitches his thoughts the way he does when he wants Charles's attention on him (which is more than is good for him, he thinks), a hook that snags Charles and pulls him from his research or his books. There are so many ways to think of it, but mostly he doesn't think, he just _does_ , and it always works – always, until now, he's had that fierce kick of pleasure when Charles looks up from whatever he's doing and smiles that sweet, pleased, supremely happy smile.

 _Come on, Charles_ , he thinks. _Look at me._

He's not used to hoping, is the thing. His mother had been the one exception to his rule of not asking anything for himself, because asking meant wanting, and most things in the world that he wanted have been things he couldn't get for himself. He hangs on anyway, to Charles's hand – crushed in his – and thinks-hopes-prays-begs, whatever you want to call it. Emma's fingers are cool against his forehead, dry where he feels covered in sweat and liquid and unsteady with wanting.

For a moment he thinks he's hallucinating the soft press of another mind against his, something hesitant, a hand reaching for something certain in the darkness. Emma, dwindled to unimportance, pulls back a little; he barely registers the second when she isn't touching him anymore. Something else takes her place, something confused, affectionate, infuriating – and utterly familiar, in a way Erik isn't sure he'll ever be able to examine closely.

It's Charles, awake, his pale, bloodshot eyes fixed on Erik. His thoughts run over Erik's like desperate fingers, the way Erik had touched his mother's cheek the morning after the night the doctors had told him to prepare himself – the pneumonia would take her, they'd said, best not to hope – a making-sure of reality.

 _You're here, you're here, you're really here_ , Charles whispers to him, _I'm here, I'm me again?_ His gaze drifts briefly up to Emma, who looks neutrally back at him, then to Raven, who looks ready to cry, her hand pressed to her mouth.

"Fucking hell, Charles," Erik growls into the hands they have clasped together, "do that again, and you won't – " He can't finish the threat, not with Charles nodding fiercely, with Charles saying _I won't, I won't_ , and drowning Erik in sincerity.

* * *

"I won't be starting until spring," his mother said, "because of the visa. But I trust you won't get into trouble, on your own? And you have the phone numbers for the Wildensteins, in case?"

Erik shook his head, not trusting his voice. His two suitcases had gone into the custody of the airline, a box of books to his new dorm room in Ithaca. All he had was an outsized backpack with a change of clothes and some books for the flight, the velvet bag of Mrs. Rabinowitz's chessmen. He fumbled with the small steel-link bracelet in his hand, hesitating over it, before finally pressing it into his mother's palm.

"Just hold it," he said awkwardly, "you don't have to put it on." And, on impulse, he added, "I'll be able to… to sense it, for a while anyway."

"Don't be foolish, Erik; I'll always wear it, from now on." His mother said this with her soft smile, knowing he'd be foolish anyway, and slipped the bracelet over the sturdy bones of her wrist. "Kiss me now, _schatzi_ ; I'll see you in December, if it won't be too hard for you to find your poor mother at LaGuardia and help her get settled."

"You know it won't be," Erik said, and despite his mother's complimentary murmurs of how strong and tall he was now, felt five years old again in her arms.

He held her as long as he could until the attendant called his flight, and then held on to the sense of the bracelet around her wrist. He held it as he boarded the plane and as the plane taxied down the runway, until the last trace of it faded out when they swung out into the air and over the sea to London.

* * *

Moira calls when she gets back to her apartment on Tuesday. _It was an… experience_ , she tells Erik, all he gets out of her concerning the experience of driving a bus and a handful of hungover young mutants back to Boston. Angel and Alex, now with Sean and Darwin in tow – Darwin because he'd never been to California, and Sean because "why not?" –, are headed out west in a couple of days, New England too square for them, "or whatever kids say these days," Moira finishes, with some amusement.

Erik feels Charles eavesdropping shamelessly – feels because, as said, Charles is shameless and not bothering to be subtle, either with his thoughts or with the deliberate shift of his body against Erik's to distract him from the conversation. His mind against Erik's is warm and idle, loose like the way Charles is stretched across their bed. Easy, liquid, like they're back in the lake in Bethel, only Charles is drugged on nothing more harmful than pleasure and spending a warm August day in the largest, most comfortable bed in the entire world.

The estate in Westchester is silent except for Raven and the staff, who (Charles assures him) think unobtrusive, soothing thoughts about their days and the massive building in their charge. Emma, before vanishing into the clean, cool safety of her limo, had suggested isolation would be best, a suggestion Charles had not welcomed in the least, but at length had to agree to in the face of, as he said, "truly unfair opposition."

Surrounded by acres and acres of silence, and with a staff that has clearly been used to telepaths, Charles seems to be becoming more himself again, more present, less likely to have his thoughts go wandering off at strange moments. The remainder of the drive to Westchester had been spent, under Charles's orders, trying to keep him talking about anything. "Even your dissertation," Erik had agreed, even though he felt he knew Charles's entire project by heart. _That's how I know you're worried_ , Charles had thought at him, before remembering to speak properly and launching in on the promises of an "intellectual marriage" between archaeology, anthropology, and genetics.

He'd tried, briefly, to describe what that day had been like their first night at the estate, curled up in his old bed with Erik wrapped around him, as though the weight of his own body might anchor Charles more permanently to his. _It was like a forest_ , he'd said, voice distant in the way it got when his thoughts had gone elsewhere. _So many voices, and I was lost._ It was the words again, Erik supposes, failing to describe what it must have been like to be everywhere and nowhere.

"It's a shame we missed the rest of the festival," Charles says now, stretching in the way he knows Erik loves best – slow, lazy, pressing himself against Erik's chest and twining their legs together. "I can't believe – well, I can – you wouldn't let me use Alex for my anchor there. He was well within my range."

"We aren't talking about this," Erik reminds him, speaking the words into the warm curve of Charles's neck. Charles hums dismissively, and there's probably a time for lecturing Charles on how he's not invincible, how missing the last day of the concert is not the end of the world. That time, Erik decides, isn't now. He rubs absent circles across Charles's collar bone and down his arm, the strong and compact muscle of his flank and hip. What starts off as a sigh turns into a purr and then short, stuttery breath, and Charles ripples softly against him, shift of muscle and bone working slowly down his shoulders and spine. Erik smirks.

"Will you be ready to head out in a couple days, or do you need longer to wallow in luxury?" he asks. The skin at the juncture of Charles's hip and torso is damp and sensitive; Charles twitches, caught between shifting away and encouraging Erik's hand lower.

"A king-sized bed or a week of terrible hotel mattresses and the chance to – to see the biggest ball of twine in Kansas?" Charles's breath catches. "Let me – god, thinking's hard right now. Mmmph."

"Then stop thinking," Erik suggests, even though Charles turning off his brain is possibly what had gotten him into that mess in the first place.

Charles's snort tells him he's been overheard, but he turns obligingly anyway so Erik's hands slip down to the hot, strong curve of his lower back. The kiss he gives Erik is filled with his usual earnestness, focused like the way Charles does everything he loves, and responding to it, Erik chases the edges of his smile into contentment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry for the long time between updates on this one; I kind of got smacked around unexpectedly by RL stuff this past week. Thank you to everyone for reading, commenting, and kudos'ing. I hope you enjoyed it!
> 
> There might be more at some point, maybe some one-shots from their road trip and life in California. It's kind of a fun 'verse to think about :)


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